


Of wine and desert winds

by noisette



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, game of thrones
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Female Character, Canon Bisexual Character, Female Protagonist, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-06
Updated: 2012-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-30 17:19:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/334184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noisette/pseuds/noisette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Dorne,” the woman whispers softly, “does not take orders from this boy king.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of wine and desert winds

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for A Storm of Swords. Considerable liberties taken with the canon timeline for the sake of the protagonists.

The Arbor wine is sweet as summer on her tongue, but Sansa feels very cold. She drank too much again under the King’s cruel eye and her head pains her terribly. A restful stroll around the garden has given way to another pathetic show of weakness. No matter; no one here expects her to be strong.

She hides beneath her furs, a woman stripped of name and birthright and her words a dangerous whisper now that only traitors mutter mockingly as she passes. Oh, she hears them all. King’s Landing lives but for the act of gossip and those who share in that fickle pleasure often know no other. There are at least six pairs of eyes watching her now as she sits under the weirwood tree, the moss green and wet under her cloak, the bark rough against her reddened cheek. This is not how northerners pray but for the nonce it will do to let the courtiers persist in error, for while she is here no one dares disturb her. The war is very far and Joffrey’s cruelty cannot reach her. 

“My lady keeps strange company,” a voice whispers from behind the tree. Sansa starts like a rabbit with its leg caught in a snare. (Which of course is precisely what she is: trapped and waiting to be skinned alive, her tender flesh boiled to brittle white bone for a hunter’s amusement.) Her gaze finds a man of middling stature and strange dress, a sun and spear wrought handsomely into the design of his leather jerkin. 

She makes to rise—a hare’s instinct when it senses the approach of a snake—but his hand waves her to peace. “No, no. I will not interrupt. Moments of solitude must be precious indeed if my lady will stand to drench her dress in mud. Good day to you.” And he is off again, prancing rather than walking with the same kind of arrogant air that all knights seem to boast of at court. Sansa is ashamed and perplexed and cannot fathom if she was belittled or dismissed or whether either was a kindness. 

But for a while after that no one in the courtyard looks at her; she becomes invisible and some strange brand of gratitude wins out. 

*

Joffrey’s court is a tricky labyrinth to maneuver without arousing the King’s ire. Habit has taught her to keep a blank face and show no emotion. Let her lord husband attract the jeers and play the dumb maid whose mind is as empty as her womb. She doesn’t even shed a tear over the songs that test the fortitude of stone-hearted guests: supper is trial and tribunal and the fanciful stories of knights and beautiful maidens no longer hold any appeal. 

Over steamed raisin cake and more arbor wine, she watches the guests from Highgarden and the ones from across the Narrow Sea. Hears the clink-clank of goblets as they are filled and laughter as it rise, rich and sour from the head of the king’s table. At her side, her husband is a nervous, fretting shadow, but his preoccupation is not with Sansa and consequently hers is not with him. Whatever troubles the court faces, whatever highs and lows await the Lannisters are not any concern of the last Stark heir. 

Her heart aches for parents and siblings lost to this senseless war, and though the wine cannot quell her grief, she reaches for the goblet all the same. Sweet summer spills down her throat: none of the bitterness of foolish desires and bad decisions and all of the promise. Over the rim, Sansa spies a familiar face. It is the man from the gardens, his head cocked to the side, his dark eyes affixed to her. 

He shakes his head minutely. _No, no. I will not interrupt._ Yet Sansa feels chastened all the same. She begs permission of Tyrion to be excused and feels her eyes grow wet with gratitude when her betrothed takes it upon himself to announce to the King that Lady Sansa is unwell. There is some jeering, at that, but Joffrey is amply entertained by pale Highgarden flesh and artifice, and Sansa is perfectly uninteresting as he strives to make a good impression. 

*

The ramparts are windy and steep and make up her favorite perch. She still remembers being dragged to the wall of the Citadel to watch her lord father’s head impaled on a spike. Poor Father. Poor Septa Mordana, who had only tried to make of her charges good and humble ladies fit for marriage to great men. The heads were removed long ago, but their shadow still lingers against a pale iron sky. 

A woman’s presence slides into Sansa’s field of vision. Seen peripherally, she is dark, too dark for these parts, and beguiling. A second look only confirms that initial inkling. “I am sent to bid you return to supper,” she tells Sansa. “For your company is already missed.”

“By the king?” Her voice is small and tremulous. She is no real Stark; she never was. 

The woman shakes her headful of black curls. “By my lord and lover.” When she leans in, her breath smells sweetly of wine and desert winds—or what Sansa imagines the desert might smell like, which is to say dry heat and sunburnt weeds. Yellow dust for miles and miles until the coast gives way to a sea so blue one cannot distinguish it from the sky. “Dorne,” the woman whispers softly, “does not take orders from this boy king.” 

*

Their names are familiar to Sansa. Her Septa’s lessons serve when she finds courage to ask of her lord husband the right questions. Tyrion has been nothing but kind to her since their wedding, but he is still a Lannister and Lannisters are the scourge which killed her father. Whatever kindness he does her now will never erase the taint of that wickedness. Sansa has vowed never to forget. She shan’t. But Tyrion is a font of knowledge and when pressed, he gives answers easily enough.

“A strange pair, aren’t they?” he asks as they break their fast together the next morning. His beady, mismatched eyes stare at her over a table of finely sliced bacon and freshly fried fish, buttered dates and perfect, round cakes served with cream and wild berries. “Prince Oberyn Martell and his woman. Ellaria Sand. They are not wed and she is base-born. Let not such details make you mistake their liaison, for she has borne him four daughters and he is said to dote upon her as he would any wife.”

“But she has given him no son,” Sansa observes, unable to conceal her confusion. A woman’s worth at court lies first in her ability to produce strong little princes—always two, an heir and a spare. As for daughters, they are trivial objects to be traded in marriage when powerful men rule it to be so. Sansa knows this now. She bows her head, suddenly afraid to have appeared overeager. “Forgive me, my lord—“

Tyrion hops off his chair, a little boy with a man’s face and appetites, off to face his day now that breakfast is concluded. “Nothing to forgive. A clear and inquisitive mind is to be admired regardless of gender. There are books on Martell history I could procure for you... though I feel I must warn you that most of what we take for record these days are but the trumped-up fables of some power-hungry lord or other. Men always seek to put the best of themselves in books,. When they write the history of my nephew’s reign, no doubt we’ll discover similar boasting.”

She still flinches when he makes to take her hand and kiss her knuckles goodbye, but as the door closes in her husband’s wake, Sansa imagines she can see a smile playing across his lips. It is the first Lannister smirk not to give her cause for panic in more than a year. 

*

House Martell is well-known for its ties to the much-maligned Targaryens. More than the Tyrells of Highgarden, who have found it so very hard to crawl back their lost power since King Robert’s war, Dorne alone has suffered grievous injury to one of its own. It is in Tyrion’s heavy, dusty book that Sansa discovers the life of Queen Elia Martell, the rise and fall of her great House and the complicated, uncertain fealty which Martells now swear to the Lannister who sits the Iron Throne. 

Swear and repudiate all at once, if Ellaria’s words are to be believed. 

Little enough is said in such books about the living, and yet Oberyn Martell merits a page in his sister’s tragic chapter. With no male heir, he should be a bitter man, like some of the nobles Sansa remembers from her father’s hall in Winterfell. The prancing confidence of one who would presume to make friendly with a married woman—for she is certain now that was his purpose in sending his—his concubine to Sansa—is not at all befitting such a beleaguered creature. More curious still, he has not given up the concubine he keeps for a high-born wife who could bear him sons. 

Of all this, Sansa pretends ignorance when she sees the pair again in Joffrey’s court. Silence reigns mistress while the king delivers his particular brand of judgment as to which peasant gets a cow, yet Sansa is still and calm only when she sees the prince across the audience hall, his odd, angular form perched over the chair in which his beloved sits. By rights the placement should be reversed as chairs are only brought out for the small council, but such details are for petty mortals to consider. Oberyn Martell’s eyes lock with Sansa’s. He nods. _Good day, my lady._

Sansa returns the gesture so slowly she scarcely thinks it will be noticed. It is. The Prince smiles. 

It feels like a small, dangerous betrayal, made all the better by the knowledge that she has done it right under the king’s nose—a king who, as if to remind her of the ugliness of his reign, decrees the cow decapitated and the quarreling peasants jailed for bringing forth such nonsense, though this is time set aside precisely for the smallfolk to air their grievances to a young but compassionate monarch.

*

Ellaria Sand is not invited to attend Margaery’s parties and though Sansa has not exchanged more than a few words with her since the Martells arrived at court, she feels her absence keenly. Rather, she feels the absence of this woman she has created in her mind, a mixture of her lady mother and Queen Nymeria, who swept Dorne with her thousand ships and married a man she chose for herself. How extraordinary that must be, she thinks, listening as Margaery and her little friends speak of Joffrey and marriage and stories that will never come true. 

After she is released from her duties and grilled by the Queen, Sansa errs lonely and alone through the citadel. She was afraid not so long ago of hands in dark passages grabbing at her, of knights bid by Joffrey to scare and hurt her. She has been afraid of many things, for a great long while, but no more. 

No more. When she sees Sandor Clegane ambling in his black armour in her direction, she holds her ground. She bids him good day. She doesn’t even glance at his awful scar. Before his surprise can fade, she is away again, walking swift as shadow through the open garden gate to seek out salvation as she imagines it. 

The Prince disappoints. He is not by the weirwood tree however much Sansa may wait and feign prayer to summon him. The weeping face carved into the bark offers no counsel. 

In the end, her fortitude is too fickle to survive the rain of the evening or the whispers that follow the next morning. Slowly, slowly, like a tortoise rolling down a newly climbed slope, Sansa falls back into herself. She does not open the record of House Martell again. 

*

It is a horrible, joyous moment when Joffrey’s face changes from pale to red to bone-white in minutes. The commotion at court is so terrible, so exhilarating that for once Sansa cannot think if she should cry and seem meek or burst out laughing. If anyone would even notice. 

Across the banquet table and very far from Sansa herself, she sees Prince and paramour observe with stony glares. Her awful delight is tempered somewhat by their self-control, but not her confusion.

Another king is dead and Sansa feels, at long last, free.

*

Her mistake costs her. With no expectations, there was nothing to fear from the future. More of the same, at the very worst, but she dared think her life would be better with Joffrey gone. Yet now that he is, and so suddenly, the Queen has turned the court against her own brother and Sansa is besieged with questions and accusations, confined to her bedchamber and harangued, constantly, for being a false subject. A secret ally of her traitorous brother. 

She begs to be allowed to see Tyrion, at first, although what good that will do either of them she does not know. Perhaps it is best that no one heeds her demands, for after a while the Queen decrees that no one is to see her save servants who come to feed and bathe her (rough brushes scrubbing a thin layer of skin every time they help her out of her small clothes and wreck apart what little is left of her dignity) and a Septa, who is authorized to sermonize at Sansa until the girl confesses her sins.

What sins she is accused of committing is never made clear. The Queen wants proof of Tyrion’s perfidy and that is all. Not even Lord Tywin succeeds in tempering her thirst for blood. 

A king is dead, Sansa muses, and yet that king had a mother. Just like her. Just like Arya and Robb and Rickon and Bran—all of them children with mothers and fathers who have taught them nothing of survival because they do not know its secrets themselves. 

By the week’s end, when Tyrion’s trial is announced, she is decided. She will meet the executioner’s sword like her lord father before she confesses a word of treason she did not commit. Nor will she bend the knee to another Lannister to demand her obeisance; nor parrot words put in her mouth by a court who has stood by and done nothing while their precious king—their now splendidly, finally _dead_ king—made sport of her as he would a wounded hare. 

The door opens in time for her midday confession. Sansa squares her shoulders under her plain white shift but does not rise from her bed. “You may as well tell the Queen I am a godless creature with no fear of the chopping block. You will not find me culpable in this farce.”

There is a pause, then a guffaw of manly laughter. “Lord Tyrion will be rejoiced to know he has such a faithful wife.” 

Surprised, Sansa turns to discover the Prince stood in the doorway with a bloody dagger and the muddy outline of what turns out to be a guard’s boot in his other hand. The rest of the guard comes into view as Oberyn drags him into the room and shuts the door. There is a little blood, but not much. Sansa counts herself vastly satisfied with barely wrinkling her nose at the ugly look of a man’s dead face. She has seen a few in her young years. 

“Make haste, my lady,” Prince Oberyn tells her as he cleans his knife against a sleeve, “for my dashing rescue will be to no effect if we are caught.”

*

It is not so dashing to be smuggled out of King’s Landing in a turnip cart, but when she is not caught and Ellaria hands her a flagon of wine, Sansa can hardly find it in her to mind the stench of rotting vegetable or the shaking of the wooden carriage. They ride many miles before it is deemed safe for her to emerge into fresh air. By then King’s Landing is no longer visible between leafy green hills. 

Oberyn talks constantly, speaking of the plan he contrived with Tyrion and the promise extracted in exchange for the name of his sister’s murderer. Sansa feels momentarily regretful for abandoning her lord husband in a dungeon, for of all Lannisters he was always good and kind to her, but Lannister he remains and so her remorse is sharply curtailed by a whisper of relief. Wherever she is taken, she will never again be back in that dreadful place, never the subject of sneering and lashings unearned except in the eyes of a jealous, fickle king.

Some distance from the capital, Ellaria provides her with a change of clothes and a saddled silver pony, and though Sansa has not ridden for many months, the feel of a mare’s barrel chest between her thighs is as welcome as the rough-spun tunic on her back. She will always long for pretty dresses and ribbons in her hair, beautiful things that make her remember a simpler age, a simpler place, but as the Martells help guide her to freedom, Sansa tells herself that such yearning can be tempered with the great leveling force of memory. All she need do is think of her father’s death to quench the echo of youthful cravings when they threaten to engulf in despair the woman she has become.

“My lord,” she asks when she has found her voice again. “Has Dorne declared for Stannis?” Her escape is treason even if the dead guard can somehow be explained away with a wave of noble fingers. 

Ellaria laughs, but it is Oberyn who answers, slowing his horse to Sansa’s pace. “For Stannis? Never. Dorne fights its own war—with Stark allies and a Targaryen princess at our helm, if they will have us.”

It takes Sansa a moment to realize she is the last living Stark in Westeros and thus the only one to deny or accept the Dornish proposal. A cold shiver sweeps through her at the thought; she is yet a girl and knows little of such things, but King’s Landing has been instructive in such regard. Sansa straightens her back, thrusts out her chin. “I— _we_ will hear more,” she says, as with one hand she helps herself to the wineskin. The flavor of autumn is on her lips. Of autumn and bittersweet partings. “Pray, what liquor is this? I’ve not tasted it before.”

“Dornish wine, my lady.” Ellaria rides ahead, sidesaddle and yet armed with a short, bejeweled and scabbarded sword not unlike that which her liege lord dirtied with blood in King’s Landing for Sansa’s sake. Ellaria throws her long black hair over her one bare shoulder. “I count it an auspicious sign that you like it.”

_Dornish wine_ , Sansa thinks, _and Dornish ways_. Perhaps there is yet a place for her to be both woman and heiress to a long line of Kings. As Ellaria puts the spurs in her own horse, both prince and Sansa give chase. 

A desert awaits them somewhere across the horizon.


End file.
